My tiny master

I set my alarm for seven,
but by three fifty
my ears
were conscious,
by four
the Chorister Robin
unlocked his breast,
unleashed his nature,
his duty
to exhort me
and eternity
to the force of morning,
stocked us with warm-blooded abundance of song,
conquered virtuoso trills in the conviction
that forever
the day
must be seized
by music
from
the beginning.

Up, up! Up! Yes, you!
And I
helplessly laughing
on my pillow
tossed the duvet aside
and obeyed
my tiny master.

                     26th November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

how?

how does one poetize from 
the thoughtless place
there where it is 
only pure spontaneous metaphor
that leaks recklessly from the throat
and in filigree syllables
drips like stalactites in ears?

nucleus

every morning my spine thaws
and truly, it is my wings that keep on stirring
right into the primordial nucleus
of sensation of the embryonic darkness
that luckily has enough throat 
to groan with the stubborn will of flight

like nails

poetry grows slowly and patiently 
like nails

and like nails poetry is there 
to scratch the itch

and even when the body dies
the nails keep on growing

word-fever

my fingers shake the sweat 
of the word-fever over
the holes of your ears
that are the subways to 
the underground of your souls
the mercury in the tube 
of your mouths
breaks free with the pressured heat
of the unmasking feverability of word

 - Lara Kirsten

In downy mist

In downy mist

the robin sits,

repeating patterns of notes,

practising sweetly.

His end trill I know

from a robin at home –

it must be the fashion

among robins this season.

In downy mist

the robin sits

practising sweetly 

his song.

Married couple at evening

Elbows on a low leather pouffe,

bum warm before a fire

she’s stretched in catlike twist

eyes closed

ears pricked

hearing

the rain

stop,

her husband’s hand shift

on the page

where his poem is coming

into being.

Clouds

Flat-bummed clouds

sit on the air

as if it were

a pane of glass.

 -  Silke Heiss

Writing season

Storks circle

in a hundred sky-high miniatures

the bush fire rages:

summer heat, South Africa.

The swifts are in:

Palm swift, Little swift, Horus

‒ cutting air-paths.

There’s nothing I can say

any longer, I suspect:

I am a smoke voice

in the winds, signifying fire,

smoke-smell, but not the thing

itself. I am a door, opening

on a hinge to nowhere,

and no-one stands to knock.

Once, under anaesthetic,

they cut my body:

I woke up bloody, and hurt.

It took weeks of blood-smell

and pain before I felt

right. Now the wound

is in my very flesh and being:

the swifts swoop close,

the storks circle in.

- Brian Walter

Wither?

Someone brought me a hurt swift
that I laid in a box
in the hope he’d recover;
but he slipped away
through a hidden crack
‒ so I laid what he’d left
in the earth to wither.


Heart's Journey

We travelled all day
through  country
close to my heart;

then I read poems
that traced
my heart's journey.


Dance

Last night
we talked and drank wine
and you and I danced

as you settled into the old house
through the keyhole
of a bit of ritual

that made you feel at home
at
last.


Brief Passing

As the brown leaves
thicken
on the paths,

powder underfoot,
my heart is heavy
with mortality

 – with the brief passing
of
things.

 - Norman Morrissey

Greater than I

i.

Once

I remember a time,

once I was a person

before I was powder

crushed

by a husband’s betrayal, his buckling

under a woman’s decrees

that he divorce immediately
disown his family

and I not see our son

except in times and places fit for her –

ii.

so the long, long road

to and fro gruelling

endlessly re-fuelling

to get my child

– resentful, grieved, skin and nails bitten –

breaking my heart

by a to and fro aching:

thorns of a foreign province

iii.

once

before I became powder

through illness in the man I loved,

his hole of debt,

his mental scree,

his efforts to endure and help me

I was

– was I? –

a person

apparently

iv.

before the office job

 – three telephones crying for hospitality,

the screen a diarrhoea of mails

each day to be wiped away quietly,

and praising or complaining guests

to be sweetened equally –

v.

dimly I remember far away

– was I once

a person?

… this implosion is not of the body:

my thighs are silky, strong,

I wash myself still,

go through the rituals of toner, moisturiser, lotion,

hungrily eat what you cook …

vi.

but it’s a once-was lovely shell you feed,

inner mettle crushed

to powder, dust.

I suffered too much

so you must not,

don’t come near me now.

Nothing holds

together –

there’s nothing to hold these years on me,

the pressure has been

greater than I.

 - Silke Heiss

klok

my hart trek

in die vorm van

‘n klok

ek prewel ‘n gebed

mag ons nie lui raak met liefde en

nooit die noodsaak van die skeppingsdaad minag

ek begin lui van diep binne my bors

dit tril en ril deur my al my spiere totdat my lyf 

opstyg en beier die wye lug in

           word wakker wêreld, word wakker!

           die nuwe dag breek aan soos ‘n swael-seisoen

           in vlug na die reuk van somer

 - Lara Kirsten

The Bell Ringer

He came among us first at Christmas

when, as a young boy , I heard him climb

the creaking stairs to ring the heavy bell.

His back bent low beneath the knotted rope,

he would ring out forever

over the stubble fields,

across numberless townlands,

to the tiny houses flickering in moon-thickets

against the northern sky.

He rang loud,

he rang long,

almost forever so I thought,

and then in the silence he was gone,

lost in the crowded lamp-lit Church,

in the dying embers of the lingering bell.

And I would listen to the silence he had made,

for he and the wind and the bell were one.

Sometimes the wind would blow the sound

across the land, and it was heard loud

where it was never heard at all.

He and the bell were one, bound

together by the knotted rope

he held in his worn hands.

The rope would wrench his arms and chest,

his head bent low beneath his work,

he belonged to the bell,

and the bell belonged to the wind,

and he and the wind and the bell were one,

bound together by the knotted rope

that did not sing but spoke

of his pain in the dumb silence

that swung across the air

when he had gone,

descending the stair.

And all that I knew was the bell-ringer,

and he and the bell were one.

But this was so long ago,

so long that sometimes I hear

the bell resound within me,

knowing it loud and true

and off by heart

in still days of wonder.

 - Cathal Lagan

I belong to a stranger

Like a tin of paint
I want to empty myself on the walls of your heart
in colours dark and bright and crimson
like the moon when it menstruates
and the clumsiness of my childhood
streaming blood down my knees

I want to draw my fears in pictures,
wrap them in your arms
that you may hold them
as if
they are your children

some days, when the sun shines brighter than usual,
I dream in colour
about moments filled with laughter and wrinkles
etched for a lifetime
on our lips
as we flash by in sepia
in dreams that were
to become

then the clouds draw in,
casting shadows on your face

you become the stranger that you are.

I shatter  

again

and again

and again. 

 - Alvené Appollis-du Plessis